Zak’s foot catches the top of the railing and he uses that to launch himself over the side of the Ferry. Zak strikes the dark water ten feet below and several feet off the bow. His clothes instantly soak and cling, trying to drag him down, as he swims up, away from the danger of the boat’s passing wake. He surfaces only to see the ferry move off, not even slowing down, and then starts to look for Kim.
Aboard the Ferry Yuan Cheng is left standing and stunned. Whatever plans there had been of staying off the radar have now disappeared in the waters of the inner harbor and he is none too pleased. What’s more, he can’t understand why they have been attacked. He looks at the open packs of the two Americans displayed on a nearby table and chair and retrieves them. If they survive their attacker he is hoping that Zak and Kim will know to head for the Wan Chai pier. The Ferry has broken off the tourist route and is now heading straight for it.
Kim continues driving into Dai Gu as they hit the water, his back taking the force of the collision with the water, and her weight adds to the impact of the body slam he receives. There is a momentary release of the pressure from his strong grip and she uses it to twist around behind him, reversing his stranglehold. She keeps a firm grip on his knife arm and pulls it behind him. With a knee to his lower back, she twists the arm forcefully enough to nearly break it before he releases his grip on the knife.
Dai Gu thrashes powerfully and she knows she can’t hold him much longer. His wild movement forces them beneath the surface but she doesn’t let go. She is thinking how it’s going to be a wild ride while Gu tries to drown her at just about the time that Zak joins them. Together they subdue him, a struggle that seems to take eons and which leaves them both exhausted. It leaves Dai Gu drifting, unconscious, half drowned. The two are left bobbing in the water, trying to catch their breaths.
“Geezus Kim!” Zak gets out between gasps, “Do you think we killed him?”
Kim gives Dai Gu, who is drifting away on his back, floating away passively, one last look.
“I don’t think so.” She coughs and throws up, a spontaneous effluvium of swallowed water and everything else besides. There is a moment of guttural wretching involved, wholly unattractive, so she swims away. Zak catches up to her.
“Are you ok?”
She starts treading water slowly, looking at him, cleared eyed.
“Better.”
Even so, to Zak she looks pale, thin, and cold in the multi-colored light being cast from the shore.
Zak looks around. Nighttime light bounces on the harbor’s waters from shining buildings all around, but the night is fading and early rays of daylight are already coming up behind skyscrapers to the West. He dismisses any concerns he might have about not being seen in the water by passing craft. The dark isn’t going to hang around for long.
Kim uses her hands like flippers to turn herself while treading in the water so that she can peer at the distant Hong Kong skyline, the great shell of the Exhibition Center its nearest point. They are floating in the middle of the inner harbor, which now seems much bigger when seen from low in the water than it did from higher up on the ferry.
When was the last time she swam for any king of distance, she wonders? How about never, she has to admit to herself. This will be a first. The adrenaline that fueled her struggle with Gu is fast giving way to a sinking feeling, one of panic, turned on like a switch. The water beneath her feet telescopes in her imagination until it seems at least a hundred feet deep. The distance to the pier grows exponentially in her imagination. She is more intimidated by the minute. The shore now seems impossibly far away. Her empty stomach begins to churn, growling back at her. She can’t shake the idea that she is too low in the water, that at any moment her body will give in to gravity’s downward pull, that it will force her head beneath the surface and finally consume her. She sees herself drifting lower and lower, tens of feet, far below the disappearing surface.
Zak is watching Kim, anticipating her thoughts.
“Is this going to be a problem?” he asks, his head bobbing in the water.
Kim’s expression changes. She forces a smile.
“Race ya,” she declares, trying to hide her fear.
Zak laughs.
“You bet you will,” he replies with more than a hint of pride in Kim’s desire to overcome her apparent fear of such a long swim. Zak, on the other hand, has surfed often with Bog and Gilly and is not be intimidated by the swim.
“We’re heading to the Wan Chai pier next to the Exhibition Center. We might as well get our stuff back. And Yuan should be there.”
He points and they can see the Ferry approaching its mooring, the outline of its running lights piercing the gloom of rising dawn.
“It’s really not that far.”
She nods.
“Do you still have the drive on you?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“And your phone?”
“Yeah,”
They can easily be found by its GPS. Maybe she won’t have to swim all that way. Maybe the Ferry captain will put in for their rescue. She wants to declare her own personal SOS. Is anybody up there listening?
Zak starts out, taking the lead, looking back, watching Kim. He goes easy, taking what are for him gentle strokes, not much more than mere stretching. Kim, on the other hand, pulls hard, using her nerves and remaining adrenaline as fuel. Her stroke is not very practiced or efficient, but she is trying valiantly to kill it.
Zak realizes she will never make it at that pace and that Kim is sure to burn out long before they can get very close to shore. But he figures that by then Kim will have lost her nerves. It’s less than a mile to shore and he intends to get her there, even if he has to carry her.
Kim didn’t hesitate to jump into the water when she thought she had to. If she could do that, she can swim across the harbor.
Chapter 19
On Fire Page 18